The real story is one of intensification. Before 2000-or-so there weren't many sky-scrapers in the City-of-London (i.e the central financial district), now it looks like there are upwards of twenty.

Similarly in almost every photograph there is much less brown/grey space. Either empty spaces, or inner-city car-parks have been replaced by parks, or by new buildings.

I think this is reflected in the population history of the city. Since 2000 the city has grown from 7.2 million to 9.0 million - that's a good 20%, and London within the city limits (not that this is a great measure of city size) now actually had more population than New York.

Yeah, city limits is a terrible way to measure city size because it varies so much depending on how different countries like to partition and label things.

On paper, Paris is much smaller than London (2 million vs 9 million), but Île-de-France has 12 million, but that in turn is a more expansive measure than Greater London. Inner London has 3.5 million. But London is basically a couple of significant cities with loads of towns and dense urban area in between and surrounding; Paris is structured quite differently.

There are various EU statistical measures that attempt to be "fair". These show London is slightly larger than Paris.

Although the OECD has them at almost the same size.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_...

Sure, but it still doesn't capture the nature of the respective cities.

Open up Paris and London in two side by side windows in Google Maps, at an approximately similar scale, and look at the pale yellow areas (the bits Google considers as retail rather than residential). It looks like there's more of them, spread over a larger area, in Paris than London. Paris is visibly denser than London.

To the degree that the main characteristic of cities is that they are dense population centres, Paris has more of that than London.

London has a lot of high streets which feel fairly generically similar, because they're basically the same across the whole UK - the same shops, the same Greggs, the same Costa Coffees, the same Coral bookies, the same companies.

The main thing that make cities interesting to me is niche shops, restaurants and other experiences which are not sustainable without a large catchment area of potential customers. Density is important to enabling that; a huge spread-out urban area, like the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, doesn't really deliver it.

I don't know if Paris has the same degree of niche experiences that London has. I lived in London for 15 years, I know it well and always enjoy myself every time I return, but I always enjoy my times in Paris too. Zurich, where I am now, is a very dull place compared to either.

You seem to be arguing that Paris is better, and have some good points.

All I was saying is London is bigger.

No I'm not saying Paris is better. I'm not saying it's bigger either. I'm saying they're different qualitatively, that size isn't everything, that density is also important.

It should be noted than London's population was 8.6 million in 1939 and decreased to less than 7 million in the 80s/90s before starting to grow again.

I wonder if the inner city driving tax, whatever it is called, could have reduced car parks.

[Congestion Charge](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge)

Not to be confused with the [Ultra Low Emission Zone](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_Low_Emission_Zone) which also requires a fee to be paid to enter the city.

This set doesn't show the very noticeable blocky developments further out in the suburbs.

The Wembley changes have been repeated across many areas in East and West London, with some - but not quite as much - North and South.

London used to be primarily Victorian. Now it's primarily Victorian with growing areas of rectangular glass-and-concrete modern in-fill.

This area used to look like this:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@51.5167921,-0.2271653,3a,75y,...

Spin around by 180 and follow the road to see what's happening across London. With more on the way.

Hah, love that you're showing White City, you've missed the gigantic residential development by Westfield and the big commercial White City Place that's continuing to go up.

I thought the same actually. These photos don't capture the transformation especially well. From the ground areas of kings cross for example are literally unrecognisable when compared to 20 years ago. Similarly nine elms or North Greenwich look superficially quite similar in the aerial photos but the reality is they are changed almost beyond recognition.

That was my reaction too; the changes are a lot more dramatic from the ground.

Yeah, less “my, how we’ve grown!” And more “meh, how’ve we grown?”